Mercer Island Sister City Association

05/29/2023

A super Soirée 2023: "À Nouveau Ensemble"! Merci beaucoup for making the Soiree a grand success!

04/20/2023

© 2018 Mercer Island Sister City Association | P.O. Box 402, Mercer Island, WA 98040 | 206.232.4740 | [email protected]

04/19/2023

Come to the 2023 Soirée!
An evening of celebration, food, music and fun!
À Nouveau Ensemble (together again)
5:30 to 8 p.m. on Sunday, May 21 at the
Mercer Island VFW Hall, 1836 72nd Ave. S.E.

Come see a presentation on our recent Student exchange to Thonon-les-Bains, and enjoy a delicious buffet catered by Kaspars.
Two complimentary glasses of French wine are included. Please bring cash for the bar and the raffle baskets! Raffle proceeds will go to the MISCA Scholarship Program.

Tickets are $60 for adults, $30 for students. Order online at: www.mercerislandsistercity.org/events
or send a check to MISCA P.O. Box 402, Mercer Island 98040. Tickets must be purchased by May 14.
Questions? Call 206-300-8518.

© 2018 Mercer Island Sister City Association | P.O. Box 402, Mercer Island, WA 98040 | 206.232.4740 | [email protected]

02/22/2023

Nineteen Mercer Island High School students and three chaperones are currently visiting Thonon les Bains, in the first student exchange arranged by the Mercer Island Sister City Association since the pandemic. They are staying in the homes of French families that have a teen matched to them by gender, age and interest. They will attend classes with their correspondent, visit sites in Thonon and the region, tour the Château de Ripaille and the Château de Chillon in Switzerland, see a demonstration of pastrymaking, go cross-country skiing or snowboarding in the nearby mountains, visit the factory of the "pearles du Leman"- and much more. In October, the French students will visit Mercer Island and stay in the homes of their partner-students, completing the exchange. Mercer Island and Thonon les Bains have been sister cities since 2000.

08/22/2022

You are invited to the Mercer Island Sister City Association's French Art Lecture, featuring well-known lecturer Rebecca Albiani, speaking on the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris- its past, its present and future - and especially an update on the restoration efforts since the devastating fire of 2019.

Due to an error in scheduling by the community center, the lecture will be offered for free on ZOOM, not in-person as previously announced.
The Zoom link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2045873733
The lecture begins at 7 p.m. Questions? call Jane Brahm, 206-353-9122.

02/26/2021

French Conversations are beginning again!
Grâce à Caitlyn Barber et Monica Howell, nous reprenons des reunions de conversation françaises, tous les deux semaines, via ZOOM.
We will meet from 3 to 4 p.m. every other Monday. Upcoming dates are:

March 8 and 22; April 5 and 19; May 3 and 17; May 31 and June 14.
The gatherings are casual, and all levels of French speakers are welcome. If enough people attend, we may set up break-out rooms for different proficiency levels. We plan to have a native French speaker attend each gathering.
Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
Weekly: https://zoom.us/meeting/tJwsd-2tqDkjGNBIP2JiHCLVIGdL2N604aUZ/ics?icsToken=98tyKuCgrzsuH9KXuRuDRow-BYigLO_wpnpEjY1_tS-3KSl7QS_AH8VGHuBRRoiE
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/98104562924?pwd=UGhNMmNic1dobXhyRzZMblE1VEp2Zz09
Meeting ID: 981 0456 2924
Passcode: 513492

12/10/2020

Scholarship winner to study in France

When she was a junior at Mercer Island High School, Natalie Jewett went on the Mercer Island Sister City’s student exchange trip to Thonon les Bains, the Island’s sister city. That 10-day trip in 2017 was a small taste of France. Immediately, she knew she wanted more.
“I loved it,” she said. “That trip was one of the main reasons I wanted to study abroad in France. It wasn’t long enough to learn about the culture and language. I’m really excited to go back and see more of the country.”
Natalie, now 20 and a junior at Biola University in Mirada, Calif., will be attending the Institute for American Universities in Aix en Provence, beginning in February.
She is the recipient of a $1,000 scholarship provided by the Mercer Island Sister City Association.
Natalie has been preparing herself for last-minute changes because of the worldwide Covid 19 pandemic – but so far, the program is continuing, and she will be leaving for Paris and then Aix en Provence in early February.
Although her classes will be conducted in English, she will be living with a French family, so she’s hoping that will measurably improve her language skills. She took French all four years at Mercer Island High School, including Advanced Placement her senior year. But French isn’t offered at Biola University, so she’s admittedly rusty. She’s been brushing up on her own, using Duolingo.
In addition to French, she’ll be taking classes in art history, drawing and (only in France!) wine tasting.
She’ll return home in May, and she hopes to travel as much as is possible while she’s there.
“I am an art major now, so I’m really excited about experiencing more of the art and culture of France,” she said. “ I’ve always wanted to go to Paris, and I’ll hopefully get to experience the local feel of where I’ll be staying.”
She hopes to be able to make connections with other students from around the world as well as local people where she’ll be living.
“I know it’ll be interesting and hard,” she says of her upcoming adventure. “But I’m really excited about it.”

08/07/2020

French film presentation (with English subtitles)" "La Salaire de la Peur" (Wages of Fear)
View the film soon - it's available at kanopy.com with your library card, on Amazon Prime, and on criterionchannel.com - the join us at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 25 on Zoom for a discussion of the film led by MISCA French Films Program director Lance Rhoades. Join the zoom meeting ID: 827 0207 1176; passcode Montand.
The 1953 film by Henri-Georges Clouzot is a brilliant and beautifully photographed twist on a "road movie" as four men in a remote South American village desperate for work agree to drive two truckloads of extremely volatile nitroglycerine hundreds of miles through the jungle.
This thrilling and meditative study of fear and courage by master of suspense Henri-Georges Clouzot (often called the Alfred Hitchcock of France) was the Grand Prize winner at Cannes and singer Yves Montand's impressive film debut.

07/08/2020

MISCA French Film discussion goes virtual!
How it works (Advance registration required; 50-attendee limit):

If you are interested in participating in the discussion, please email a request to MISCA Board Member, Joel Wachs ([email protected]) in order to receive your Zoom invitation meeting link and password. (A Zoom account is not required to participate, but you will need internet access. You may also participate in an audio-only experience via your phone.)

Please watch at your leisure the featured film, Les Enfants du paradis (Children of Paradise). This film is available for streaming on Amazon Prime and The Criterion Channel as well as Kanopy, which is free with your local library card. Please send your comments and questions via email ahead of time to Joel. The discussion will be led by MISCA French Films Program Director Lance Rhoades.

About July's featured film:

Les Enfants du paradis (1945) is director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert’s masterpiece set in the theater scene of 1830s Paris in which four men fall madly in love with Garance, a sophisticated performer-courtesan. Remarkably, this lavish and epic film was made partly in secret over two years during the occupation in Nice and Paris, and released only months after liberation.

Sponsored by The Mercer Island Sister City Association

If you have any questions or concerns, please email Joel Wachs.